Sawant Wins (43rd LD Straw Poll)!

Okay, so it’s not exactly statistically meaningful or predictive, but socialist city council member Kshama Sawant kicked ass last night at the 43rd Legislative District Democrats’ annual straw poll, winning 145 votes, more than twice the 70 votes of second-place finisher, Urban League president Pamela Banks. Former Equal Rights Washington director Rod Hearne came in third with 59 votes, followed by Morgan Beach with 52.

There’s been more than a little wishful thinking on the part of some establishment Dems that Sawant is on shaky ground with rank and file Democratic voters, but you wouldn’t know it from her reception last night. Sawant was surrounded by well-wishers all night long, while her challengers had to put a little effort into their mingling. If their bylaws didn’t prevent the 43rd Dems from endorsing a non-Democrat, I’m pretty sure she’d easily win the LD’s endorsement.

The fact is that few Democratic politicians speak to the values of the party’s progressive base as directly as Sawant does. So it shouldn’t really be a surprise that so many Dems are willing to overlook her socialist label.

Not all the tickets were sold. Everyone got 8 free tickets, so turning out people was a great source of votes too. People power won the night for Sawant. As someone who has been involved with the 43rd for years, I know she has a lot of support here.

Sawant deserves the win and I hope she keeps pushing the dems to do their god damned jobs.

Here we are with polls showing majority in the state support $12 an hour, and the dems can’t be bothered to crankup a state initiative to get the thing passed.

they’re down their in olympia trying to persuade and convince the gop to pass it. good luck with that. maybe they can, but hello, mounting the initiative threat would only help, right? it would help the Ds politically, too, branding them as for the working folks again, something they have totally totally lost with all the corporate donor schmoozing, focusing on non economic class issues, handing out billions to corporations .

Sawant’s “socialism” is actually “Democratic party platform planks” except for a few impractical things she will never achieve like nationalizing microsoft. The Dems should change their rules and endorse her. she’s a better dem than most dem officials, who followed her lead, and did not lead, on the $15 min wage movement!

Republicans have been very effective over the past 40 years at moving the “Overton Window” of acceptable political discourse to the right.

Policies once limited to John Birch loons are now mainstream Republican talking points. Rockefeller/Nixon republicanism is routinely attacked as “socialist.” Democrats have retreated from traditional economic values, running to the right, trying to repeat Clinton’s triangulation strategy. This reduces voters to a choice of clown care Republicans vs. Republican Lite Dems (distinguished mostly on social issues like gay marriage).

That’s why Sawant gets support. She’s willing to talk about economic issues many Democrats, tied to corporate interests, would prefer to ignore. Even when I disagree with her, her presence is valuable in pushing the window of political possibility back to the left.

we need to face dacts, Democrats in this state are very regressive and have the same economic interests as the Republicans. It’s why our state has the most regressive tax system yet have had democratic control for 30….. no party shill this State didn’t get regressive overnight because of Andy Hill.

Let’s face dacts again the Democrats want to raise the sales tax again to make the state even more regressive.

It’s unfortunate, but the Democratic ideals that I fell in love with, are not what the democratic party represents anymore in this state. Teachers aren’t paid well enough is what they say, but they’ve been in power for 30 years, whose fault is it that they haven’t received a cola? You don’t get to be in total control for almost 30 years then tell people there’s so much that needs to change.

You had the keys to the car and went into reverse, don’t be shocked when the state lets a Republican drive just to see what it’s like.

@9 You need to understand that Washington is a three-party state: The Loon Party, the Republican-Democratic Party, and the Democratic-Democratic Party. The last two caucus together, but they don’t agree on a lot of things, so the coin flip tends to go to the Republican-Democrats (i.e., ex-Republicans who couldn’t stand either the label or the party anymore, so they decided to be Republicans inside the Democratic Party).

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